


Soldiers and Men

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, M/M, WWII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Steve's watch. (It has been, since Italy: Steve watching Bucky, his pallor and his sleeplessness and his every move, the way Bucky has always watched him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldiers and Men

**Author's Note:**

> I have cabloom back to beta things! (As always, reposted from tumblr, and so forth. I can't remember who prompted this, but thank you, because I _love_ writing Steve and Bucky during the war. It's rife with angst and miscommunication and misunderstandings - where Bucky keeps expecting Steve and getting Captain America, and Steve keeps expecting Bucky and getting a Soldier instead.)

Dum Dum was supposed to wake Steve up for his watch at two am. Steve had volunteered for the mid watch — he needed less sleep, after all, and it would be easier for him to lose two hours in the darkest part of the night and keep marching the next day.

What _actually_ woke Steve up was Dugan’s whispered argument with Bucky, held almost directly over his head.

“I’ll take the watch. He needs to sleep!” snapped a familiar voice, a little hoarser than Steve remembered it.

“ _You_ need to sleep, Sarge,” Dugan replied, and Steve could have kissed him. “Far as I can tell, you’ve been standing watch since Stark dumped us in Poland.”

“I’m fine,” grumbled Bucky, digging the butt of his rifle into the ground. _I’m fine_ had been a constant refrain in Steve’s life — only it had always been Steve saying it, before.

Steve Rogers knew what it was, to bite your tongue and lie through your gritted teeth.

“Go to bed, Dum Dum,” Steve croaked, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes and waving off the vague silhouette of a bowler against the night sky. “I’ll keep an eye on things,” he added, and Dugan was smart enough to know what Steve meant.

“You got it, Cap,” Dum Dum agreed, giving a lazy salute and making an about-face to his own bedding, snoring nearly before he hit the ground.

Steve was still a little shocked, every time he gave an order and nobody guffawed.

He rolled forward until his elbows were resting on his knees, then shimmied out of the sleeping bag and stretched, trying to realign his spine after a week of sleeping on sticks and rocks. When something finally popped, he groaned and lowered his arms — and almost groaned again, because Bucky was still standing there, only now he was holding out one of those ration bars made of sawdust and glue.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve said firmly, because Captain America didn’t whine. “Go to bed!”

“You need to eat,” Bucky declared, ignoring him and waving the ration bar at Steve. “Howard said that you need more food, now, and you’ve been eating like you’re still five feet tall.”

Steve squinted at the ration bar — not entirely convinced that it was _food_ , even if he was hungry — and then squinted at Bucky’s pale face and bloodshot eyes. “If I eat this,” he compromised, “then you have to lay down.”

“There ain’t no ‘if’ about it, punk,” Bucky threatened, but Steve saw him look down at his sleeping bag and hunch his shoulders, staring at the bag like Steve had filled it with snakes.

(There had been a snake in Morita’s roll, three nights ago, and Steve maintained that he had not, in fact, “screamed like a girl.” Still. They’d been better about shaking out their bedding, since then.)

“I’m not tired,” Bucky said, as though his exhaustion wasn’t written into his shaking hands and the lines of tension on his face.

“All right,” Steve said, because the last time Steve had shoved Bucky toward his bunk to get some sleep, Bucky had _flinched_ , and Steve was never, ever doing that again. “I’ll eat the damn ration bar,” he conceded, snatching it out of Bucky’s trembling hand.

“C’mon,” he tried, instead, his mouth filled with crumbling dust that the Army called food. “I’ll get a better vantage point up on that rock. You can keep me warm.”

Bucky was very determined to keep Steve warm, despite the fact that Steve sweated through the layers his friend kept piling on top of him, in spite of the flush in Steve’s cheeks that Bucky still put down to fever, and not to a superhuman body that ran too hot. Steve could work with that. Years of Bucky trying to con Steve into resting had taught him a thing or two.

“Yeah, all right,” Bucky agreed, after blinking suspiciously at Steve, unable to find any tricks in standing watch next to his oldest friend.

“Great!” Steve grinned, teeth flashing in the dark, and marched them both onto the flat top of the boulder, snagging a coat he didn’t need along the way.

Bucky stopped abruptly and folded his arms, glowering at Steve’s hand. Steve looked down, huffed, and jammed the rest of the ration bar obediently into his mouth. “Better?” he mumbled, spewing crumbs, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

“I’m cold,” Steve announced, as soon as they’d settled onto the rock, eyes scanning the horizon and ears pricked for any strange sound.

(Last week, Steve had woken them all up because he’d heard gunfire. Jones had sprung to his feet before groaning, rubbing his eyes and pointing up at the woodpecker above their heads. Morita had cackled about “city boy Rogers” for days, right up until he had found himself sharing his bedroll with a snake.)

“What do you want me to do about it, asshole?” Bucky asked, but he was already settling closer against Steve’s side. The first few times he had tried to wrap himself around Steve’s back like a blanket, the way he always had, but it was awkward and unwieldy and nothing like it had been. By now they had worked out a new system, where they leaned together and Steve slid his arms under Bucky’s shirt and around his chest, keeping them both warm.

Bucky sighed, and settled a little deeper, apparently content to let Steve keep watch. “You feel pretty warm to me,” he said, sleep slurring the words, but he didn’t move away.

Steve — who wasn’t above playing dirty, when he needed to — hummed his agreement, and then turned that sound into the first notes of a lullaby, rubbing his hand in slow circles over the scarred skin of Bucky’s back.

Some of the scars were old. There was the broken fence that Bobby McAllister had pushed Bucky onto in second grade, and the small nicks from the countless times they’d all rolled into the asphalt during a neighborhood brawl. But there were new scars there, as well; long, thin strips of abraded skin that kept Bucky away from mirrors and made Steve’s gut clench.

Bucky grumbled something, possibly his disapproval of Steve’s underhanded tactics, but he was slumped in Steve’s arms and his eyes were closed. “Shh,” Steve whispered, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s forehead, settling his best friend’s weight against his chest. “I’ve got you.”

Steve kept watch until dawn, until the sun was clear over the horizon and he could hear the Commandos stirring even without their Captain shouting them awake.

“Sleep well?” he asked Bucky, smirking at his friend’s ire, because Bucky’s gaze was murderous but his hands were steady, and his eyes were clearer than they’d been in weeks.

“Fuck you,” Bucky retorted — about as friendly as he came, before the first cup of joe — but he brushed his hand through Steve’s hair, pressing the inside of his wrist briefly to Steve’s forehead the way he had for years, testing for a fever that wasn’t there. “I was just keeping you warm.”


End file.
